Australian born actor Kenneth Spiteri's debut screen performance is as German soldier, Sergeant Karl Babek, in Jeremy Sims' Beneath Hill 60. The role demanded that the actor shift his perspectives – and languages – so as to portray his character's fears of life and death.
Spiteri completed his training at L'Ecole International du Theatre Jacques Lecoq Paris before returning to work in Australian theatre. With both of his parents born in Malta, Spiteri saw his opportunity live and work in Europe when Malta joined the EU in 2004. “I gained European citizenship and that took me to Berlin,” he reflects. He later commenced post-graduate theatre studies at the Wasihrwollt Akademie and was living and working in Berlin when Beneath Hill 60 casting director Kirsty McGregor approached him to audition for the role of Babek.
Set in 1916, Beneath Hill 60 is based on true events that saw allied forces in Belgium tunnel underneath Messines Ridge with its notorious Hill 60. Spiteri says it was the strength of David Roach's script that first attracted him to the role of Babek, a 28 year-old Sergeant whose unwavering intensity leads to the belief that he has discovered a covert operation in which Australian soldiers play an integral part; Babek is convinced that he can hear the allied forces tunnelling beneath him and sets about convincing his superiors of this fact.
Spiteri emailed director Sims with a video audition, in which the actor filmed himself reading two scenes in German. Within a week, Sims contacted him with the news that he had won the role.
For Spiteri, it is the universal emotions that Babek experiences, which hold the key to his character, moreso than his nationality or status as an enemy combatant. “He's like everyone else who was there. He was trying to save his own life,” the actor says. “He has an idea that the Australians are underneath them. Once he is convinced that is the case, he spends the rest of the time trying to convince his superior in order to obtain permission to do something about it. He's a man caught up in a situation where the situation dictates a life or death resolve”.
The script enabled Spiteri to shun the possibility of a one-dimensional treatment of Babek. “[That element of the script] was what I was really impressed with,” the actor says. “Often when we see films of the war, the German characters are portrayed as the clichéd, stereotypical 'baddie' and that was absolutely not the case in this film. I felt a huge sense of relief, and an obligation to do my best to make this character as human as David had made him. I'm really glad to be part of a generation now that we are getting to the point that we understand that is the case.
“The enemy is a human face. They just happen to be on the other side. I'm really proud to be part of a film that portrayed that.
“It had less to do with playing a German and everything to do with playing a person who happened to be on the other side of the trenches; [someone] just as desperate and just as keen to live as the Australians”.
Despite living and working in Germany for the past four years, the role of Babek is the first time the actor has been challenged with a character in either the First or Second World War. To prepare, Spiteri read All Quiet on the Western Front, by German World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque. The book, says the actor, “gave me a perspective of the conditions that these young men were faced with in a war that was unprecedented in scale. All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of men who had signed themselves up for a war that they thought was going to be over in a couple of months. They were stuck there for years in what were horrific circumstances”.
Spiteri admits that despite his preparations, there were significant changes once filming began: “They had to make amendments to the scripts,” he says. “The draft that I first read two months before my shooting date was very different to the draft that we ended up shooting on the day. Consequently, because my text was in German, the translation was changing. So as much as I did my best to prepare, there was a certain amount of fluidity required”.
While the actor has only been working in the German language for “two or three years”, he acknowledges that there is “something quite liberating about it. There is a distance to what you are saying. Perhaps it is because there is not a 'mother tongue connection'. Obviously the pressure is on when you have to cut it as a native speaker and that's a difficult situation to be in because you want to sound as authentic. I find it really exciting and interesting but it is still quite a new thing for me”.
